essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
I see you standing there – starch white lungi draped
7AM freshly shaved – wooden spoon in hand
Commanding your caramelising populace.
one bright red strawberry on the strawberry plant
mist still low, tangled in the branches of olive trees
the way the pomegranates hang low
with the burden of their own weight
Faces are remembered, words spoken; that brief encounter at the fair, the smell of old sunlight a slow night train.
On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.
You’ve probably never noticed them. Their red and white box usually sits well below their thick-cut, smoked, and maple-flavored cousins in their clear ‘look at me!’ packaging. Or, sometimes, Ends and Pieces aren’t displayed at all, and you have to ask the butcher for them. Because mind you, they are the ends and pieces, the leftovers, the scraps. Who would want them?
My mom, that’s who.
How she longs for the asteroid to come, to show them how little they controlled anything.
Reuniting with translator Polly Barton, Matsuda revisits similar themes in this new collection; across fifty-two stories, she tackles the pervasive misogyny faced by women in contemporary Japan and beyond.
Desire could drain a reservoir. Fear could empty a playground. And someone like her would be left to label the files.
The past peels me off like red pared down to
parent rock (think barn, cadaver, three-wheeled
wagon upended in the bee garden).
My hand slips—crushed pepper
fills the pot, the water is boiling
not simmering as you said, you said
I needed to be careful, but look now
“We are prompted to savour each word, carefully probing between our teeth to discover new morsels of meaning.”
That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.
You slid the nit comb through my hair
then rinsed and laughed about how
you loved hunting them down
legs floating, brush of seaweed
bulging water moves us
up and down
the shore seems very far away
I wanted to be a part of their club, their conversations, their laughter. Eating, I decided, was my way in.
Stevie busies himself trying to match two blue pieces of sky. You watch him working the corners and the glands in your throat swell.
If you walk along a path
between forest and shore
between grains eroded by the sea
they were mountains once
I found that writing and art keep me sane, they’re like a room of my own in a time when I’m rarely alone.
Am I livestock or the boning knife?
Amongst the timid lambs, half-dreaming
Inside the atoms of the cavity block extension live the remnants of a thousand John Players.
They say a lot of the work of being poly is scheduling. When I say ‘they’ I mean smug influencers with poorly produced podcasts, and when I say ‘being poly’ I hate myself.
My family observes the emu cage. Beaks so vengeful, I realise we’re taking the piss.
I first saw her walking,
the folds of her ink blue dress
turning the earth;
But from time to time it does exist. Something like a stray lash under the eyelid
trying to catch its last breath.
at least the colour I’m told is
robin’s egg blue, like
boy-baby blankets, like
deep breaths of sunshine.
It’s these questions I have. (An astral whodunnit: a whydreamit).
They’re small animals
wriggling to get out
Just let us touch the crust, they say
feel it crackle
I know it’s over when I picture the train carriage
it’s an old-fashioned carriage with burgundy velvet seats
a little room in my memory.
You are sun-skinned, but my half
of the planet is tumbling into the dark.
Family is my way of honouring the Filipino spirit, where the bond of unity, the guidance of elders, and the hope carried by the younger generation come together to form a love that is simple, yet profound—one that transcends individuality and connects us all.
It is an old superstition.
The mirror, and the room
dark behind it but for the
flickering of a few fading
candles.
My memories can be quantified in cups of tea,
and meat pies filled perfectly, slumped against
a mountain of mash
Like thirst – a need to quench, slake, state:
first hearse, first coffin and pallbearing.
I become great at darts, a phenomenon
on dart circuits, earning enough from darts
to pay for lobster rolls
maybe they look down
at their bodies as they left them
in neat rows, heads of wheat
crackling green and gold
She arms herself with the metal pipe of the Electrolux
with the precision of a marksman
(coffee, pastry,
food-words,
unfettered time)
Words words words black as a cat.
I just saw you in the periphery of
Manet’s Olympia — or maybe Cézanne’s
…across the bitter world, a sweet gift from Pachamama
like my father who taught me to feel
and press its skin: a map of lost worlds
For the good of the country we claimed their land & property. It was necessary for the people.
In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.
They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.
and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.
There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.
Porridge 